First the children learned about what they could and couldn’t put in a compost pile by playing compost bingo.

It was a rot of fun.

Then the kids decorated hanging baskets and planted flowers in them.

First you decorate.

Then you get to the dirty work

While planting they learned about different kind of gardens—flower, vegetable, heirloom, urban and more.

In addition to their flower pots, kids also took home corn and carrot seeds and onion bulbs they can plant.

This was our way of introducing the kids to gardening and the bigger world of botany. Botany is just one of the branches of science we’ll be learning about during our summer reading program, Fizz, Boom, Read. You can start signing up for Fizz, Boom, Read on May 31. This year, a lot of our programs have a scientific theme. And, as always, you can win a lot of cool prizes—just for reading.